Novel Cellular traffic offloading delay tolerant using Wi-Fi access points in Trace-driven simulation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose and evaluate an integrated architecture exploiting the opportunistic networking paradigm to migrate data traffic from cellular networks to metropolitan WiFi access points (APs). To quantify the benefits of deploying such an architecture, we consider the case of bulk file transfer and video streaming over 3G networks and simulate data distribution utilizing authentic mobility data set of 500 taxis in an urban area. We are the first to quantitatively evaluate the gains of citywide WiFi offloading utilizing astronomically immense scale authentic traces. Our results give the numbers of APs needed for different requisites of quality of accommodation for data distribution in sizably voluminous metropolitan area. We show that even with a sparse WiFi network the distribution performance can be significantly ameliorated. This effort accommodates as a paramount feasibility study and provides guidelines for operators to evaluate the possibility and cost of this solution.